07 September 2009

Know your Honourable Legislative Councillor: Tanya Chan

I promised I would write something local in this entry, but I was not sure. Because any comment against anybody in the Hong Kong pro-democracy camp will be taken as pro-Beijing, the last thing I want to be related to. But I soon found out that I don't give a fuck really. So here you go.

Upon my worship of my personal god in local media Mr Michael Chugani, I found an interesting clip of ATV World Newsline on YouTube. It's an interview by Chugani after Tanya Chan and Priscilla Leung won the LegCo election last year.

So those of you who voted for her saw new hope for the democracy of Hong Kong? Let's check out the interview:

Chugani started by asking Tanya Chan, "What's the thing that you want to achieve most in LegCo? You've got four years, what do you want to do?" (0:38 of the clip)

Expecting a monumental, visionary statement?

Tanya Chan however spent the next minute or so talking about tall buildings. Huh? Did you vote her into the LegCo to talk about tall buildings, those of you middle-class city slickers who live in Hong Kong Island and work in investment bank offices on 50+ floor of those tall buildings?

Ok, she added that she cares about youth problems, too. Where is she when we have this heated debate about the drug test?

Let's check out her website and her blog and see what the hell has she been doing last year. Anything under the "development and planning" section of her blog? One letter. And the "Education & Youth Affairs"? The system says it right, it says, "Not Found - Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn't here." Looking at her blog, you would like to think that she is a stage artist/columnist who writes about food and advocates certain obscure tree policies rather than a politician. So where the hell are the "tall buildings and youth problems", Tanya? And the "very long to-do list"? She rightly called her website "splash", it's a mere noise without much substance.

Would you hire her?Or even shortlist her for a second round interview?

Most of us have been through job interviews. Some of us even interviewed somebody for jobs too. We must have heard of this famous interview question, which goes like "why do we have to hire you?/why did your past employer hire you?" It meant to be a question for you to talk about your strengths. See how did Tanya answer that in 5:49 of the above clip.

She told us about her lack of experience, and that you, who voted for her, are only being generous for giving her a chance.

Will you hire that kind of candidate in a job interview?

Her lack of experience, or is it the common trait of those pan-democrats?

Another interesting finding from the Chugani interview, check out 2:01 of the following clip:

She was asked how she would solve all the problems the Hong Kong government failed to solve so far. She went murmuring a series of buzzwords for another minute there.

Is it her lack of experience? Well, at the time of the interview, she's not even started her LegCo; maybe we're too harsh to criticise one of her older interviews like that.

Here comes the "pro-Beijing" bit of this entry. The murmuring answer of Tanya Chan showed a common trait of the local pan-democrats. Whenever you ask them how they would solve those problems, if they're elected democratically to the administration, they murmur.

They have been giving us a mythical false hope for years, that democracy is the answer to all the shits we've been through. Democracy the religion!

I personally have no problem with democracy. I want to see it right here right now myself. It'll be a big STFU for some of my annoying fellow citizens who see lack of democracy as an ultimate excuse for our collective failure. Let's all vote a guy into the CE office. If we still see those shits, we only have ourselves to blame.

You go and watch other parts of the interview (links to part 2 and part 3), Tanya Chan kept saying that it's about the problems of our electoral system.

I guess we want to see better hope for Hong Kong than the Zhou Xun of the Civic Party.

My friendly gesture to the Big Brother

So, I hope this entry will be taken as my friendly gesture to our Big Brother. Think again, I don't want to be taken to the labour camp.

I don't know what you think, I found the interview embarrassingly amusing. If not for my worship of Mr Chugani, I would not have remembered there's certain Tanya Chan. Maybe because I don't live on the Hong Kong Island anymore, nor am I working in those tall buildings; and I'm no longer among the youth whom Tanya Chan cares.

Of course, to be fair, Tanya Chan is not the only LegCo member who cash our very fat HK$60K+ pay cheque every month for doing very little, almost nothing. Some don't even bother to show up in meetings. Maybe this entry will be the first among the Pub's series of "Know your Honourable Legislative Councillor". After all, I need to do a lot to show my friendliness to the Big Brother.

About the Pub

At the Libertines Pub, Hong Kong, you're invited to think otherwise. We are a bunch of rascals who got fed up with the herd mentality and would like to see you having the courage to think for yourself. Our sole objective is the liberation of your thinking through provocative, sometimes irritating, ridicule.